Brave Men, Dark Waters PDF Download

Author: Orr Kelly
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497645638
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
A definitive history of the US Navy’s renowned special operations fighting force—“the most complete in-depth study of this fabled elite unit” (Library Journal). The legend was forged in the fires of World War II, when special units of elite navy frogmen were entrusted with dangerous covert missions in the brutal global conflict. These Underwater Demolition Teams, as they were then called, soon became known for their toughness and fearlessness, and their remarkable ability to get the job—any job—done. Years later, the renamed US Navy SEALs (for Sea, Air, and Land) continued to be a wartime force to be reckoned with throughout the remainder of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. They served as rangers and scouts in the jungles of Vietnam, answered the call to duty in Panama, Granada, and in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, while developing into the very best of the best, the cream of America’s Special Forces crop. Author Orr Kelly offers a rich and riveting history of the SEALs, covering their remarkable triumphs while not shying away from the scandals and controversies. An extraordinary portrait of extraordinary fighting men, Brave Men, Dark Waters shines a brilliant light into the darkest shadows of war, which is where the SEALs have operated for decades with awesome and deadly efficiency.

Author: Jason Lewis
Publisher: BillyFish Books LLC
ISBN: 0984915532
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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“This is a delightful and funny adventure ... It is also lonely, dangerous and frightening.”—THE LONDON TIMES He survived a terrifying crocodile attack off Australia’s Queensland coast, blood poisoning in the middle of the Pacific, malaria in Indonesia and China, and acute mountain sickness in the Himalayas. He was hit by a car and left for dead with two broken legs in Colorado, and incarcerated for espionage on the Sudan-Egypt border. The first in a thrilling adventure trilogy, Dark Waters charts one of the longest, most gruelling, yet uplifting and at times irreverently funny journeys in history, circling the world using just the power of the human body, hailed by the London Sunday Times as “The last great first for circumnavigation.” But it was more than just a physical challenge. Prompted by what scientists have dubbed the “perfect storm” as the global population soars to 8.3 billion by 2030, adventurer Jason Lewis used The Expedition to reach out to thousands of schoolchildren, calling attention to our interconnectedness and shared responsibility of an inhabitable Earth for future generations. * * WINNER of the BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AWARD & ERIC HOFFER AWARD * * “Often funny and irreverent, always frank and authentic, Lewis’s first volume of The Expedition series is also marked by the thrills of a first-rate adventure.”—FOREWORD REVIEWS “Skating through Alabama with long hair, duct tape on the nipples, and women’s culottes … What were you thinking?”—JAY LENO, The Tonight Show “A riveting true-life adventure as inspiring as it is thrilling.”—UTNE READER “An extraordinary expedition on an epic scale.”—BEN FOGLE, television presenter and adventurer “Last great first for circumnavigation.”—THE SUNDAY TIMES “Truly a tale for our time. You really smell, taste and breathe this journey in a way that is only possible by travelling more slowly.”—ROYAL SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY

Author: Dick Couch
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 1400046955
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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With a postscript describing SEAL efforts in Afghanistan, The Warrior Elite takes you into the toughest, longest, and most relentless military training in the world. What does it take to become a Navy SEAL? What makes talented, intelligent young men volunteer for physical punishment, cold water, and days without sleep? In The Warrior Elite, former Navy SEAL Dick Couch documents the process that transforms young men into warriors. SEAL training is the distillation of the human spirit, a tradition-bound ordeal that seeks to find men with character, courage, and the burning desire to win at all costs, men who would rather die than quit.

Author: Neil Swidey
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307886735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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The harrowing story of five men who were sent into a dark, airless, miles-long tunnel, hundreds of feet below the ocean, to do a nearly impossible job—with deadly results A quarter-century ago, Boston had the dirtiest harbor in America. The city had been dumping sewage into it for generations, coating the seafloor with a layer of “black mayonnaise.” Fisheries collapsed, wildlife fled, and locals referred to floating tampon applicators as “beach whistles.” In the 1990s, work began on a state-of-the-art treatment plant and a 10-mile-long tunnel—its endpoint stretching farther from civilization than the earth’s deepest ocean trench—to carry waste out of the harbor. With this impressive feat of engineering, Boston was poised to show the country how to rebound from environmental ruin. But when bad decisions and clashing corporations endangered the project, a team of commercial divers was sent on a perilous mission to rescue the stymied cleanup effort. Five divers went in; not all of them came out alive. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents collected over five years of reporting, award-winning writer Neil Swidey takes us deep into the lives of the divers, engineers, politicians, lawyers, and investigators involved in the tragedy and its aftermath, creating a taut, action-packed narrative. The climax comes just after the hard-partying DJ Gillis and his friend Billy Juse trade assignments as they head into the tunnel, sentencing one of them to death. An intimate portrait of the wreckage left in the wake of lives lost, the book—which Dennis Lehane calls "extraordinary" and compares with The Perfect Storm—is also a morality tale. What is the true cost of these large-scale construction projects, as designers and builders, emboldened by new technology and pressured to address a growing population’s rapacious needs, push the limits of the possible? This is a story about human risk—how it is calculated, discounted, and transferred—and the institutional failures that can lead to catastrophe. Suspenseful yet humane, Trapped Under the Sea reminds us that behind every bridge, tower, and tunnel—behind the infrastructure that makes modern life possible—lies unsung bravery and extraordinary sacrifice.

Author: Gene Wentz
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
ISBN: 1466831316
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
"Full of ambushes and firefights...From page one I knew I wanted to be a SEAL. The more I read, the more I wanted to see if I could measure up." —Mark Owen, #1 New York Times bestselling author of No Easy Day Because it's a novel, the truth can be told. Because it's the truth, you'll never forget it... Gene Wentz's Men in Green Faces is the classic novel of Vietnam that inspired a generation of SEALs. Here is the story of a good soldier trained to be part of an elite team of warriors—and of the killing grounds where he was forever changed. WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY THE AUTHOR Gene Michaels carries an M-60, eight hundred rounds, and a Bible. The ultimate SEAL, he also carries a murderous grudge against a bloodthirsty colonel who was once one of their own. To bring him in, Michaels and his men will go behind the lines, where they'll take on 5,000 NVA in the fight of their lives. In this stunning novel, former SEAL Gene Wentz brings to life what it was like to be a SEAL in Vietnam, running an endless tour of top-secret, death-defying operations deep in enemy territory. From the camaraderie to the harrowing recons, from brutal interrogations to incredible, toe-to-toe firefights, here are America's most feared warriors as you've never seen them before.

Author: Walter Mosley
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 075952467X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
In this thrilling 1950s noir, when a beautiful woman comes into Paris Minton’s life, everything starts falling apart—leaving him no choice but to ask Fearless Jones for help. Mosley returns to mysteries at last with his most engaging hero since Easy Rawlins. When Paris Minton meets a beautiful new woman, before he knows it he has been beaten up, slept with, shot at, robbed, and his bookstore burned to the ground. He's in so much trouble he has no choice but to get his friend, Fearless Jones, out of jail to help him.

Author: Ernie Pyle
Publisher: Michael O'Mara Books
ISBN: 1782436146
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Ernie Pyle was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist. This is his first hand account of life on the European front-line during World War II. Written with touching sympathy and humanism, Brave Men offers a poignant description of the everyday experiences of American foot soldiers; their courage, humanism and unshakeable camaraderie. A must-read war memoir.

Author: Mark Moyar
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465093019
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Oppose Any Foe is the epic story of America's most elite warriors: the Special Operations Forces. Born as small appendages to the conventional armies of World War II, the Special Operations Forces have grown into a behemoth of 70,000 troops, including Navy SEALs, Army Special Forces, Air Force Night Stalkers, Special Operations Marines, Rangers, and Delta Force. Weaving together their triumphs and tribulations, acclaimed historian Mark Moyar introduces a colorful cast of military men, brimming with exceptional talent, courage and selflessness. In a nation where the military is the most popular institution, America's Special Operations Forces have become the most popular members of the military. Through nighttime raids on enemy compounds and combat advising of resistance movements, special operators have etched their names into the nation's registry of heroes. Yet the public knows little of the journey that they took to reach these heights, a journey that was neither easy nor glamorous. Fighting an uphill battle for most of their seventy-five year history, the Special Operations Forces slipped on many an occasion, and fell far on several. Presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama have enthusiastically championed Special Operations Forces, but their enthusiasm has often surpassed their understanding, resulting in misuse or overuse of the troops. Lacking clearly defined missions, Special Operations Forces have had to reinvent themselves time and again to prove their value in the face of fierce critics-many of them from the conventional military, which from the start opposed the segregation of talent in special units. Highlighting both the heroism of America's most elite soldiers and the controversies surrounding their meteoric growth, Oppose Any Foe presents the first comprehensive history of these special warriors and their daring missions. It is essential reading for anyone interested in America's military history-and the future of warfare.

Author: Benjamin H. Milligan
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0553392190
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 641

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Book Description
A gripping history chronicling the fits and starts of American special operations and the ultimate rise of the Navy SEALs from unarmed frogmen to elite, go-anywhere commandos—as told by one of their own. “Deeply researched, well organized, and incredibly engaging . . . This is our legacy with all the warts, the challenges, and the heroics in one concise volume.”—Admiral William H. McRaven, #1 New York Times bestselling author and former commander, United States Special Operations Command How did the US Navy—the branch of the US military tasked with patrolling the oceans—ever manage to produce a unit of raiders trained to operate on land? And how, against all odds, did that unit become one of the world’s most elite commando forces, routinely striking thousands of miles from the water on the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, even Central Africa? Behind the SEALs’ improbable rise lies the most remarkable underdog story in American military history—and in these pages, former Navy SEAL Benjamin H. Milligan captures it as never before. Told through the eyes of remarkable leaders and racing from one longshot, hair-curling raid to the next, By Water Beneath the Walls is the tale of the unit’s heroic naval predecessors, and the evolution of the SEALs themselves. But it’s also the story of the forging of American special operations as a whole—and how the SEALs emerged from the fires as America’s first permanent commando force when again and again some other unit seemed predestined to seize that role. Here Milligan thrillingly captures the outsize feats of the SEALs’ frogmen forefathers in World War II, the Korean War, and elsewhere, even as he plunges us into the second front of interservice rivalries and personal ambition that shaped the SEALs’ evolution. In equally vivid, masterful detail, he chronicles key early missions undertaken by units like the Marine Raiders, Army Rangers, and Green Berets, showing us how these fateful, bloody moments helped create the modern American commando—even as they opened up pivotal opportunities for the Navy. Finally, he takes us alongside as the SEALs at last seize the mantle of commando raiding, and discover the missions of capture/kill and counterterrorism that would define them for decades to come. Written with the insight that can only come from a combat veteran and a member of the book’s tribe, By Water Beneath the Walls is an essential new history of the SEAL teams, a crackling account of desperate last stands and unforgettable characters accomplishing the impossible—and a riveting epic of the dawn of American special operations.

Author: John Prados
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0451414829
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
The Battle of Midway is traditionally held as the point when Allied forces gained advantage over the Japanese. In Islands of Destiny, acclaimed historian and military intelligence expert John Prados points out that the Japanese forces quickly regained strength after Midway and continued their assault undaunted. Taking this surprising fact as the start of his inquiry, he began to investigate how and when the Pacific tide turned in the Allies’ favor. Using archives of WWII intelligence reports from both sides, Prados offers up a compelling reassessment of the true turning in the Pacific: not Midway, but the fight for the Solomon Islands. Combat in the Solomons saw a series of surface naval battles, including one of the key battleship-versus-battleship actions of the war; two major carrier actions; daily air duels, including the aerial ambush in which perished the famous Japanese naval commander Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku; and many other hair-raising exploits. Commencing with the Allied invasion of Guadalcanal, Prados shows how and why the Allies beat Japan on the sea, in the air, and in the jungles.